A couple of weeks ago I was cutting firewood from trees that had been knocked down by a recent tornado. The trees were only a short distance off the road—maybe a hundred yards—so I drove my friend's large truck into the clearing where we were cutting.
The day before it had lightly rained, so there was maybe half an inch of mud on the ground—hardly enough to speak of, I thought. But when I got the truck to the worksite, I found that I was stuck. I tried forward and reverse. I jammed rocks under the tires. We all pushed. Nothing worked. I was completely foiled by half an inch of mud and had to call a tow truck to pull me out of the woods.
Just as half an inch of mud was enough to make a large, powerful truck completely useless, so our lives become completely unproductive when affected by just a little fear, or anger, or any of the Getting and Protecting Behaviors. And then we need serious help—a tow truck, so to speak—to get us out of trouble.
We have to watch for the mud. We have to diligently examine our fears and our reactions to fear in order to address them early and avoid getting completely stuck by the "little" things. We have to be much more aware and willing to respond to what we see than I was with the truck in the mud.
